The Manchurian Candidate Review

1962

2004

The Manchurian Candidate(1969) is a political thriller where the son of a parliament US political family is slyly brainwashed into being an assassin for the Communist party.

The Manchurian Candidate(2004) is also a thriller that focuses on the kidnapping and brainwashing of soldiers during the Gulf War. 

Both have the genres; psychological thriller and political thriller down to a tee.  With their tension and suspense building scenes.

The Birds Review

The Story - A wealthy woman from San Francisco travels to Bodega Bay; a small northern Californian town, to follow a potential love interest. Although mysterious things start to happen in Bodega Bay upon her arrival. Bizarrely all the birds come together start to attack and kill people, in a very vicious manner.

There are certain scenes within the film that contain fast pacing and frequent action. An example being Cathy’s birthday party scene; the children are playing in the garden when suddenly a mass amount of birds swarm down and start to attack the children. Another example would be the café scene.

The film has your typical story characters . The male hero being Mitch Brenner ' Rod Taylor' who saves the damsel in distress who is Melanie Daniels 'Tippi Hedren'. And of course you have your typical villains the birds who terrorize the small Northern California Town  and viciously kill  its residents.

It took the crew one week to shoot the scene of Melanie being ravaged and viciously attacked by the birds.Hedren had  been reassured by Hitchcock that they would  use mechanical birds but that was not the case. It was said that she had endured various marks on her cheek and close to her eyes from being attack and had been ordered a weeks rest before returning to filming.

There are various different endings to the film and Alfred Hitchcock said that he wanted to give the impression of unending terror. To keep fear in the viewers that the birds might still be out there.

Psycho Review

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock 
Writers – Joseph Stefano (Screenplay)                        Robert Bloch (novel)

The Story - The film is about Marion Crane stealing $40,000 and planning to run away with her boyfriend Sam with the money. She stops at Bates’ Motel  and is greeted by Norman Bates who seems to come across as a confusing and strange character .Later that night ,whilst in the shower ,Marion is murdered by who we believe to be Norman’s mother;Mrs Bates. Norman protects his mother and covers up the murder and hides all the evidence in the swamp. It appears he got away with it all until a private detective turns up questions Norman on the whereabouts of Marion. And once again Mrs Bates appears and kills the detective. Following these events we soon see Marion’s boyfriend and sister turn up to the motel to talk to Mrs Bates, and they are   astonished by their findings.




Psycho will be known by many for its infamous shower scene. This scene includes 77 different camera angles and approximately 50 cuts, altogether. Psycho has its fast paced and frequent actions scenes but does well to build up suspense and tension in the end seen where Marion’s sister is searching the house and finds the supposedly alive mothers dead corpse.

 Psycho will not only be remembered for the shower scene but also for its memorable discordant music, which tries to imitate that of a psycho.